In January 2001, Tara Louise Baker, a 23-year-old University of Georgia law student, was found dead in her Athens apartment after a fire that investigators quickly determined was no accident. Tara had been sexually assaulted, beaten, strangled, and stabbed. The fire came after — an apparent attempt to erase what happened inside that apartment.
For more than twenty years, her case lived in silence.
Then, in 2023, new funding for Georgia cold cases reopened old evidence. Modern DNA testing produced a profile that led investigators to Edrick Lamont Faust. In 2024, Faust was arrested. In 2026, after a trial built largely on forensic science, he was convicted on all twelve counts.
But this episode isn’t just about a verdict.
It’s about what DNA can — and can’t — tell us.
It’s about how cold cases move from evidence lockers to courtrooms decades later.
It’s about reasonable doubt, secondary transfer, chain of custody, tunnel vision, and the quiet power of probability when everything else has faded.
We walk through Tara’s life, the crime scene, the stalled investigation, the CODIS hit, the courtroom battles, and the defense’s unanswered questions — including the absence of eyewitnesses, fingerprints, surveillance, phone data, and any documented relationship between Tara and Faust.
We also talk honestly about race, forensic certainty, and what it means for a Black defendant to stand trial for the murder of a young white woman in the South — especially when a case rests almost entirely on DNA.
Faust was found guilty.
But did the jury get it right?
Or are we watching a justice system still learning how to handle science that arrives decades late?
This is a story about grief and proof.
About science and certainty.
About what justice looks like when it finally shows up — and what it leaves behind.
Because cold cases don’t just reopen files.
They reopen wounds.
And they force us to sit in the in between.
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